US to decommission national giant monkey alert system

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today announced the decommissioning of the giant monkey alert system in order to focus attention on the threat of global terrorism.

The system was introduced in 1934 as an early warning for cities at risk from giant monkeys and gorillas such as King Kong, whose attacks on the eastern seaboard were well-publicised at the time. Although no recorded giant monkey attacks have actually happened, each US president since Harry Truman has accepted the military’s advice that such a catastrophe has been ‘imminent’ and left the nation on high alert.

In the past fifty years there has been only one giant monkey incident, when a beacon in California detected the presence of a giant primate capable of siring dozens of aggressive offspring, but exhaustive FBI operations revealed that it was state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Mrs Clinton said that the US now needed to accept that human terrorists were a more urgent threat than enormous apes. ‘We have decommissioned the giant monkey alarm system with immediate effect,’ she said. ‘But we remain committed to the fight against huge banana trafficking, and we ask our citizens to remain vigilant and report any suspicious giant monkey-related activity, especially if they can’t speak American.’